A Quote by Jonathan Franzen
Expecting a novel to bear the weight of our whole disturbed society—to help solve our contemporary problems—seems to me a peculiarly American delusion. To write sentences of such authenticity that refuge can be taken in them: isn't this enough? Isn't it a lot?
Related Quotes
There are a whole lot of historical factors that have played a part in our being where we are today, and I think that to even to begin to understand our contemporary issues and contemporary problems, you have to understand a little bit about that history.
The DNA of the novel - which, if I begin to write nonfiction, I will write about this - is that: the title of the novel is the whole novel. The first line of the novel is the whole novel. The point of view is the whole novel. Every subplot is the whole novel. The verb tense is the whole novel.
Do people have a right to be angry about, not just the political class, but every institution in society? Absolutely. But neither anger nor fear will solve our problems. They can serve to motivate us, but it will not solve our problems.
I am particularly disturbed that our country is the largest financial supporter of an organization that not only wastes a lot of our money but also seems to be increasingly anti-American in its policies and conduct.
There is a central flaw in contemporary culture and a corresponding and related inability to address it. Society seems somehow unable to adequately help or protect itself. Normal citizens feel powerless, isolated and disturbed.
We are more than our problems. Even if our problem is our own behavior, the problem is not who we are-it's what we did. It's okay to have problems. It's okay to talk about problems-at appropriate times, and with safe people. It's okay to solve problems. And we're okay, even when we have, or someone we love has a problem. We don't have to forfeit our personal power or our self-esteem. We have solved exactly the problems we've needed to solve to become who we are.
The idea of an isolated American painting , so popular in this country during the thirties, seems absurd to me, just as the idea of a purely American mathematics or physics would seem absurd... And in another sense, the problem doesn't exist at all; or, if it did, would solve itself: An American is an American and his painting would naturally be qualified by the fact, whether he wills or not. But the basic problems of contemporary painting are independent of any one country.
Contemporary art will help me to modernise our society.
The secret message communicated to most young people today by the society around them is that they are not needed, that the society will run itself quite nicely until they - at some distant point in the future - will take over the reigns. Yet the fact is that the society is not running itself nicely... because the rest of us need all the energy, brains, imagination and talent that young people can bring to bear down on our difficulties. For society to attempt to solve its desperate problems without the full participation of even very young people is imbecile.
God is enough like us to understand our problems and enough above us to be able to solve them.
We must recognize that we can't solve our problems now until there is a radical redistribution of economic and political power.... a radical restructuring of the architecture of American society.
There aren't enough professionals to solve the world's problems. There will never be enough doctors to solve the health problems of the world. There will never be enough teachers to solve the education problems of the world - illiteracy. There will never be enough missionaries to care and comfort and share the Good News. It has to be done by normal, ordinary people.
And I've come to the place where I believe that there's no way to solve these problems, these issues - there's nothing that we can do that will solve the problems that we have and keep the peace, unless we solve it through God, unless we solve it in being our highest self. And that's a pretty tall order.
Maybe philosophical problems are hard not because they are divine or irreducible or meaningless or workaday science, but because the mind of Homo sapiens lacks the cognitive equipment to solve them. We are organisms, not angels, and our minds are organs, not pipelines to the truth. Our minds evolved by natural selection to solve problems that were life-and-death matters to our ancestors, not to commune with correctness ot to answer any question we are capable of asking.
Where are the leaders who can speak to the idea that it is not alien to American interests, but very much in our socioeconomic interests - not to mention our spiritual health - to integrate immigrants, that our nation functions best when we welcome newcomers and help them participate fully in our society?
I had noticed that many of these successful people, historical and contemporary, shared certain common traits. They had a way of thinking that was exceptionally fluid; they could adapt to almost any circumstance; when confronted with problems, they could look at them from novel perspectives and solve them.
Related Authors
Benjamin Disraeli Quotes
British
Celebrity
Bertrand Russell Quotes
British
Celebrity
Bobby Fischer Quotes
American
Celebrity
Fred Rogers Quotes
American
Celebrity
G-Eazy Quotes
American
Celebrity
Garry Kasparov Quotes
Russian
Celebrity
Gary Johnson Quotes
American
Celebrity
Jimmy Carter Quotes
American
Celebrity
Joe Buck Quotes
American
Celebrity
Ken Wilber Quotes
American
Celebrity
Kim Kardashian Quotes
American
Celebrity
Kourtney Kardashian Quotes
American
Celebrity
Lord Chesterfield Quotes
British
Celebrity
Paris Hilton Quotes
American
Celebrity
Richard Simmons Quotes
American
Celebrity
Tom Petty Quotes
American
Celebrity